Date published: 2007/05/15
The Cambridge Evening News says:
A film festival is set to take place on Midsummer Common despite objections from residents.
The Strawberry Fair Film Festival has become an annual event, taking place in a big top tent the night before the main festival, which this year is on Saturday, June 2.
But the city council told organisers they could not hold the event after pressure from the recently formed group Friends of Midsummer Common.
The festival organisers were furious and claimed the group was trying to stop people using the common. The group's chairman says it was simply trying to protect the green space.
After a furious row, the council has changed its mind and agreed the film event can go ahead.
...
The event uses a screen and projector borrowed from the Arts Picturehouse and shows short films made by amateur film makers, most of them local.One of the organisers Simon Mullen, a local film enthusiast, said: "The residents' principle objection is the potential for disturbance, but I can give them three years of evidence that there won't be any, because there has never been any."
Geoffrey King, chairman of the Friends of Midsummer Common, said: "The biggest problem is the number of events and the impact it has on the infrastructure and the quality of the common, which has gone downhill over the years.
"Midsummer Common isn't a fair ground. We are very lucky to have such a large green space so close to the city centre and it needs to be looked after."
The so-called Friends of Midsummer Common is just another special interest pressure group trying to preserve its own special interest at the cost of the rest of society. The people who live near Midsummer Common are rich and evidently don't like the peasants being able to enjoy something that they themselves enjoy every day. Fortunately in this case the council seems to have told them to get lost. There was a similar ridiculous discussion a few years ago about having a skateboard area on Jesus Green. And you can of course make the trivial statement that "Midsummer Common isn't a fair ground", because Midsummer Common is so much more. But events like Strawberry Fair and the File Festival are exactly the kind of events that should be happening on Midsummer Common (or Parker's Piece, or Jesus Green). This "large green space" is only "green" because it is full of grass, which is well used to being trampled by people and equipment and even eaten by cows. There was a typical amusement arcade on Midsummer Common a week or two ago and the grass is already pretty much back to normal. Midsummer Common does not need "protection" except from the middle class control freaks of the world who want to stop everyone else from using it.
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